Work is progressing to formalise the United Kingdom’s participation in a number of European programmes, including Horizon Europe. Following the political agreement reached on Thursday 7 September (see EUROPE 13245/4), on Monday 6 November the EU Council published a draft decision of the EU-UK specialised committee on participation in European programmes under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).
In addition, a Council decision proposed on the same day aims to give a mandate to the specialised committee to adopt Protocol I, concerning the programmes and activities in which the United Kingdom participates, and Protocol II, concerning access by the United Kingdom to services offered within the framework of certain European programmes and activities in which the United Kingdom does not participate.
Scope and terms of participation
The draft text provides for the United Kingdom to participate in all parts of Horizon Europe referred to in Article 4 of the Horizon Europe regulation (EU/2021/695), as well as in the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), by means of a financial contribution.
Subject to the provisions of the TCA, the document also provides for participation in the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and indirect actions. In this respect, the draft provides in particular that, where UK entities participate in the activities of the JRC, UK representatives will have the right to participate as observers, without voting rights, in the Board of Governors of the JRC.
The draft also provides for participation in European joint undertakings.
Finally, the draft aims to record the exclusion of the United Kingdom and its entities from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, a financial instrument of the EIC Accelerator.
Additional automatic correction mechanism
The draft text provides details of how the UK’s contributions will be calculated between 2024 and 2027.
The document also sets out the calculation methods for the automatic correction mechanism decided at political level (see EUROPE 13245/4).
This mechanism would intervene automatically, if necessary, to remedy a situation in which the amounts of the initial legal commitments (competitive grants) contracted with the UK or UK entities for a given financial year were considerably lower than the corresponding operational contribution paid to the Horizon Europe programme by the UK for the same financial year.
The text provides for the possibility, if the difference in absolute terms is greater than 16% of the corresponding operational contribution for the budget year concerned, of reducing the operational contribution to be paid by the United Kingdom for the second subsequent budget year.
Door open to other association agreements
More broadly, in a speech at the FT-ETNO Tech & Politics Forum, the European Commissioner for Research, Iliana Ivanova, said that she was making it a personal priority to work on other Horizon Europe association agreements with partner countries on a reciprocal basis in order to make the internal market more attractive.
Link to the draft decision: https://aeur.eu/f/9g7
Link to the mandate: https://aeur.eu/f/9g9 (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)